


All Hell Breaks Loose (Part Two)

by RoseWinterborn



Series: Little Sister Winchester [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bobby as a Dad, Character Death, Episode: s02e22 All Hell Breaks Loose, Gen, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Tags Are Fun, backstory info, i guess, ish, not a whole lot to do with ep 2x22, simultaneous occurances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-08 11:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7755127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseWinterborn/pseuds/RoseWinterborn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lou spends some time by herself, and she gets an unexpected visitor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Bobby Singer was a gruff and, he liked to think, intelligent man, so when Dean shoved him and snarled to leave if he knew what was good for him like an animal, the fact that he had no response other than a quiet, "you know where I'll be" was a testament to his own grief.

But Sam wasn't the only casualty of the yellow-eyed demon's tantrum. The girl--Lou--was in the back of the impala, awake for the first time since the fight.

Bobby had her sit up and take off her ratty sweatshirt so he could look at her wounds, and had to help her. She couldn't lift her arms at all without shaking and fighting down what must have been a great deal of pain. He cut the shoulders of her t shirt away and cleaned out the gashes in her shoulders with peroxide.

He gave her the whiskey to drink.

"Alright kid. I'm gonna ask you some questions, starting with your name. What's your name?"

"Lou."

"Your full name."

"Mary Stanton."

Bobby paused. "How the hell you get Lou out of that?"

"Middle name's Louise." As she spoke, Lou's shoulders slumped with exhaustion, only to scrunch up again from pain.

"Do you know what day it is?"

"No," She mumbled. "Don't know how long I've been here."

"Fair enough," Bobby said. "S'pose you don't know where you are either?"

"Dakotas," She said. "Sam said."

Bobby's heart clenched at the sound of Sam's name, but not as much as it did at the question that followed.

"Is he gonna be okay?"

Tears welled up in Bobby's eyes and, hell with it, he let them fall. "Sam's dead, Lou," he choked.

Her eyes widened, and she whimpered a soft, "no." Bobby couldn't help but nod, and watch her curl up in a wretched little ball in the back seat and mourn for the boy who had saved her life.

 

“Where’s home for you, kid?”

“Don’t have one.”

 

Bobby took her home. His home, that is, in Sioux Falls. It was a six hour drive, starting at ass-o-clock in the morning, and he had trouble keeping his tired eyes on the road. Lou was in the backseat curled against the door. He’d have thought she was asleep, save for the occasional sniffly sigh that escaped her, and the dim glint of her eyes under the passing lights.

He pulled his truck into a gas station about halfway in for fuel and a cup of coffee. He parked and turned to Lou, who was staring off into nothing, looking beyond exhausted.

“You hungry?” he asked.

She started to shake her head, then seemed to change her mind and nodded. “I don’t know when the last time I ate was,” she admitted.

“I’ll grab you a sandwich,” he promised. “Anything to drink?”

“Water?”

“Comin’ right up.”

The cashier didn’t appear to have been expecting anyone at four a.m.; he was asleep, slumped over the counter. It took Bobby ringing the bell by the register three times to wake him up.

Lou ate like she’d been starved for a year. In fact, the more Bobby looked at her, the more it seemed like she’d been in trouble long before the demon got ahold of her. She was thin as a rail, with cheekbones like razors. Her collarbones were bandaged now, but when he’d handled them it had been like holding so many sticks in his hands instead of human bones, the skin stretched over them in ways that a well-nourished person’s shouldn’t have.

The same part of his heart that had ached for Sam and Dean whenever John dumped them at his door for a case ached for the damaged girl hunched in his backseat eating a turkey sandwich like it was a five-star meal.

He finally pulled into the salvage yard. It was just after seven, and Lou had managed to sleep through the sunrise. He tried to wake her gently, but couldn’t bring himself to be all that surprised when she flailed.

“It’s okay, kid. It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Lou nodded and tried to catch her breath, chest rising and falling rapidly. She swallowed hard, looking around and blinking repeatedly. “Where are we?”

“Singer Salvage,” Bobby grunted. “Home sweet home.”

He gave Lou one of the spare rooms upstairs and a box of his late wife’s clothes. He knew they were outdated and wouldn’t fit, skinny as Lou was, but he reasoned that they were better than the shredded t shirt and ripped up jeans the girl’s been wearing for God knows how long.

“Go get some rest,” he told her. “You look dead on your feet.”

He listened to her footsteps on the floor overhead until they were silent, then he let himself sit down at his desk and cry.


	2. Chapter 2

Lou woke gently to streaming sunlight and birdsong. It was so peaceful she could have cried. Not out of relief that the past few days hadn’t been a dream—her shoulders ached with the promise of pain should she dare to move—but because, after everything that had happened, she was safe now.

She gingerly got out of bed, slow-moving due to pain, and changed into a baby-blue sundress and a cream-colored cardigan softened by age and wear. Each article of clothing smelled faintly of mothballs and cinnamon, a spicy, bitter perfume. Though the clothes barely fit, but she was in no position to complain.

She finger-combed her hair as she stumbled down the narrow stairs. “Bobby?” she croaked. There was no reply.

She wandered into the kitchen, found a note pinned to the refrigerator.

_Food in the cabinets. Drinks in the fridge. Painkillers in top left drawer of desk._

_Back by tomorrow._

_Bobby_

The scrawl was spidery and hurried, and she could have kissed the paper. It was real. She was still safe.

There were few bottles of water dispersed among the numerous bottles of booze in the refrigerator, and she took one gratefully, draining nearly half of it before remembering the painkillers. Her shoulders were stiff and sore, the scabs likely cracked and oozing blood into the bandages.

She found the desk in what seemed to be Bobby’s study, a room packed to the ceiling with stacks and stacks of books. Lou forgot about the painkillers all over again; she was too distracted by the titles stamped authoritatively across the spines of the books. Some she could read: anthologies of myths and folklore from Europe, Africa, South America. Others were titled with Asian characters she couldn’t decipher, the books’ covers straining from the loose leaf notes stuffed between the pages. Laughter bubbled up in her chest. It wasn’t happy laughter, but it wasn’t quite hysterical, either. Demons were real, but apparently so was everything else.

Lou took down a book on Greek myth whose cover featured an urn emblazoned with heroic figures. In her head she named them all and the monsters they’d fought, before her laughter slipped away. She wondered how many days of class she’d missed. How many assignments.

She wondered if it was too late to go back. Lou set the book on the desk and found the medication she needed, taking it with a generous mouthful of water before setting both pills and water aside to return to the book.

She had nothing, and, for the moment, was no one. She may as well wait for Bobby to return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's unlikely that this work will include anything from the actual episode, except for aftershocks of those events. As may be apparent, Lou's story here takes place simultaneously with the episode, but she didn't follow Team Free Will into the jaws of death this time around. 
> 
> I do promise more excitement in the next chapter. Please bear with me. 
> 
> Comments welcome! If I can do something to make the reading experience more enjoyable, do let me know!


	3. Chapter 3

As it got dark, Lou found herself turning on every light in the house.

She didn’t know precisely why, but if she had to guess she’d suppose it had something to do with discovering that monsters were real and that perhaps the dark wasn’t quite as safe as she’d been led to believe.

She stayed mostly in Bobby’s study, paging through books and occasionally munching through a sleeve of crackers from the kitchen cabinet, her chewing unbearably loud in the empty house.

The lights flickered momentarily, and Lou’s heart climbed up her throat.

She set her book aside with shaking hands—Native American Shamanism—and glanced around for something to defend herself with. The most viable options were the iron pokers leaning neatly against the fireplace behind Bobby’s desk; she stumbled towards them on unsteady legs, hefting one with clammy fingers. Her heart was pounding, so hard that it hurt.

Sounds that she’d ignored for hours suddenly seemed more sinister. The settling of the house, the soft breath of wind outside the windows, the distant bark of a dog.

A resounding crash came from the kitchen, sending Lou back against the wall with a start, the poker clutched tight in her hand.

“Where are you, little girl?” the intruder snapped, the question punctuated with the crunch of footsteps on broken glass.

Lou didn’t make a sound.

“Little girl,” the woman snarled, voice louder, closer. “You’d better fuckin’ answer me.”

She came into view, middle aged and surly, with lanky hair and mussed clothes and a gun in her hand that made Lou shrink in on herself in fear.

“There you are, you little shit,” she growled.

Lou gripped the poker tighter. “What do you want?”

The woman laughed. It was an ugly, bitter sound. “What do I want? Doesn’t matter now, does it? Azazel has fallen. It’s over now, all of it. Thanks to you.”

“Wh-what are you talking about?” Lou stammered.

“When I was your age, I made a promise to a man with yellow eyes. He had a cause, you see. He was gonna make the world a better place for us. Us freaks, that is. All he needed was one thing: a child.”

Lou’s mind turned the sentence over and over, and the woman’s voice mixed with Sam’s.

_All he needed was one thing._

_A demon decided we were its chosen._

“So I had you,” the woman said. “I was gonna keep you, train you. Get you ready. But the government took you away from me. Said it wasn’t right, the way I was treating you. Put you in foster care, gave you to people who didn’t know about your _destiny.”_

“You did this on purpose?” Lou asked, horrified.

“Of course I did it on purpose,” the woman scoffed. “You think I like living like this?” She gestured to her clothes, gun shaking in her hand. “You were supposed to fix that. You were supposed to lead his armies, command his soldiers. We were to be royalty in Azazel’s court!”

For half a moment, a wild gleam shone in the woman’s eyes, before they went dark and utterly, utterly blank. “But he’s dead now, so you’re no use to anyone.”

She raised the gun.


	4. Chapter 4

There was the heavy click of a gun being cocked, but it wasn’t the one in her hand.

“Woman, what the hell are you doing in my house?” Bobby asked. Lou nearly sagged in relief.

“Fixing a mistake,” the woman said through gritted teeth. She turned towards Bobby slightly, face morphing into a frightening approximation of a smile. “Ellie Stanton. Friend of John Winchester.”

Bobby huffed. “John was no saint, but I don’t think you’re his kind of crazy.”

Ellie cackled. “Only had to be for one night,” she said. Her gaze snapped over to Lou again. “Azazel always had a soft spot for Winchesters. You were his favorites.”

“John slept with you?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah, not that he remembered a damn thing in the morning,” Ellie sneered. “He was drunk off his ass. Kept calling me Mary, crying, apologizing. Whoever she was, he missed her.

“That’s how you got your name, sweet thing,” she said to Lou. “I thought it would be fitting, for a Mary to destroy him and everything he loved.”

“Lou,” Bobby said. “There’s a phone there on the desk. I want you to call the cops.”

“Don’t you move, brat,” Ellie snapped. “I’ll shoot you dead.”

“Not if I shoot you first,” Bobby grunted. “Lou. Phone.”

Lou took one shaky step towards the desk before the room exploded with noise and pain rocketed through her ribs. She stumbled and caught herself on the edge of the desk, hand flying to her side. Touching it didn’t make it feel any better.

Bobby was at her side in half a second. “How bad is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said shrilly, yanking her hand away for him too look. He visibly sagged with relief.

“It’s just a graze,” he said. “Didn’t go through anything ‘cept skin.”

“Hurts like a bitch,” Lou whimpered, and he laughed.

“Yeah, usually does.” He fumbled around for a second before shoving a rag into her hand. “Put pressure on it. I’m gonna go find some bandages.”

He had to step around Ellie’s crumpled body to get to the bathroom. Lou wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“Who’s John Winchester?” she asked as Bobby disinfected the wound. It distracted her from the sting of the alcohol.

“Your daddy, apparently,” Bobby said. “Good hunter. Colleague of mine.”

“She said Azazel liked him.”

“Not John,” Bobby corrected. “His boy Sam. You met him.”

“Sam?” she choked. It was a moment before she could get her throat to work properly again. “Sam was my brother?”

Bobby paused for a moment, like he was trying to figure something out. “When I told you he was dead,” he started. “I was…not wrong, but. I wasn’t totally right.” He looked at his hands, then looked her in the eye. “Sam’s alive, Lou. He’s fine.”

“But you said he was dead,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

“His brother Dean—you met him too—he did a stupid thing. Brought Sam back.”

“And he’s okay?”

“Sam is. Dean is in a world of trouble.”

“What did he do?”

Bobby sighed. “Sold his soul to a demon.”

“Like the one that chose us?” Lou asked. The books around her seemed more sinister now than they had before, absurdly.

“Kind of, yeah,” Bobby said.

The news that there was more than one demon shook her to the core, and shut her up for a good long while.

Once she was bandaged up and resting uneasily on the couch, Bobby took care of Ellie. Lou didn’t know what he did with her body, but it wasn’t lying in the study doorway anymore so she was grateful. Bobby was gone for a good hour or so, and Lou didn’t move in his absence. She just sat there, thinking. Worrying.

When he came back, he was dusty and looked grumpier than usual, but she couldn’t help herself.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

“’Scuze me?” Bobby asked.

“What are you going to do with me?” she repeated. “I’ve been poisoned. I have _demon blood_ in me. My biological mother was crazy, and _I_ brought her here, she broke your window—“

“How’s that your fault?” Bobby asked.

“It’s all because of me,” Lou whispered.

“No it ain’t,” Bobby said. “I can’t fault you for it any more than I can fault Sam.”

“But I can’t stay here,” Lou said. Saying it made her feel sick. She couldn’t stay here, but she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“Why’s that?” Bobby asked. He settled against the edge of the desk, arms folded in front of him.

“I just can’t,” she said. Tears welled up and she scrubbed them away. “Bad things happen around me.”

“You really are a Winchester,” Bobby snorted. “Melodramatic, all of you.”

“But—“

“I don’t have any problem with you staying here. It’s a big house. Gets lonely sometimes. And you said yourself on the way, you don’t have anywhere to go, do you?”

Lou was quiet for a moment, save for her sniffly breathing. She shook her head.

“Do you want to leave?” he asked. She paused, then shook her head again.

“Fine,” he said. “Room’s yours. Clothes are yours, for now. We’ll see if we can find something better when you’ve healed some more.”

Lou kept herself composed long enough to stammer a thank you and leave the room. She made it about halfway up the stairs before she couldn’t see through the tears and had to stop. Silent sobs kept her hunched over, a hand over her mouth and her eyes streaming.

For the first time in weeks, she was crying because something was going right.

**Author's Note:**

> Next time I'll get back into the events of the episodes. Till then, indulge my Dad!Bobby feels. 
> 
> Comments are welcome!


End file.
